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dyingov

dyingov

The new Department of Homeland Security would have 180,000 employees and a $36 billion budget, but its supporters promised it would be nimble. There were a few dissenters in Congress. One was Representative John Mica, a Florida Republican. “I gave a little speech at the time,” he remembers. “I said anyone who thinks you can combine 22 agencies and 200,000 people and it’s going to be more efficient and economical needs to have their head examined.” He turned out to be prophetic. DHS became a study in mismanagement. The department’s top ranks swelled with appointees with questionable credentials. The most famous was Michael Brown, the former FEMA director who had been previously employed for a decade by the International Arabian Horse Association. There were frequent interagency tussles. For instance, two separate agencies—the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—were supposed to safeguard the nation’s peripheries together.

Triton

Its really not the program its how and who administers it. The Obama years have brought us the reality that he has turned the program inward and there is no point in denying that. We also know that Obama (and please don't say he didn't know it, his Chief of Staff did) turned the IRS into targeting ordinary citizens who oppose his programs (just people who disagree). And he has allowed drones to fly over American cities and he has local police out collecting information with license plate readers detaling where you have gone, who you have visited and who you know for decades. The problem with the NSA's operation, is that we have someone in charge whom we have no reason whatsoever to trust, someone who has demonstrated contempt for personal freedom and is in love with military adventures, assasination, and targeting Americans for what they think. The national media avoids dwelling on the IRS scandal, but it is so much worse than anything Nixon did. And we dumped him for less.

wonderwhy

dyingov

Thanks for saving us from the terrorists that are calling each other on the phone to plan the next attack!

Just don't ask the NSA for an email between NSA employees!

"The NSA says that there is no central method to search its own email. When asked in a Freedom of Information Act request for emails with the National Geographic Channel over a specific time period, the agency, which has been collecting and analyzing the data of hundreds of millions of Internet users, says it can only perform person-per-person searches on its own email."